Venice Prize for Israeli Gaza War Documentary Ignites Backlash at Home

An Israeli documentary examining civilian deaths in the war in Gaza has triggered a sharp domestic backlash after it received the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival last week, with senior officials condemning the project and one minister calling for the filmmakers to lose their Israeli citizenship.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused those behind the film, titled "NAZA", of incitement and antisemitism. "We are fighting global antisemitic incitement," he said on Monday. "When it comes from within us, it's simply unbearable."

Culture Minister Miki Zohar urged that the documentary's Israeli co-directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, be stripped of their citizenship. Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the military's chief of general staff, asked military prosecutors to investigate possible leaks connected to the film and vowed to track down the soldiers who cooperated with it, calling it "a dangerous attempt to deny us the legitimacy to defend ourselves against the worst of our enemies."

Shot in secret over three years on Tel Aviv rooftops at night, "NAZA" presents testimony from 24 Israeli military insiders, including intelligence officers and soldiers. They describe what they characterise as the systemic killing of Palestinian civilians and allege that Israel uses artificial intelligence to identify and bomb suspected Hamas targets, often aware that many civilians may die. The Israeli military has acknowledged using AI to help identify targets but says a human makes the final decision before any strike.

"NAZA" is an acronym used by Israel's military to mean collateral damage. The film was co-produced by The Guardian and Jonathan Glazer, director of the 2023 Oscar-winning "The Zone of Interest", and is the second documentary from Abraham and Szor after their Oscar-winning "No Other Land". It is not yet available to audiences, though the filmmakers have said they intend to seek distribution in Israel, Europe and the United States.

The Guardian said in a statement that the testimonies in the film are true and deserve to be heard, and that the interviews were given by confidential journalistic sources.

Many of Israel's leading politicians and military officials have described the film as anti-Israel and lacking context, while acknowledging they have not seen it. Criticism has come from Netanyahu, his Cabinet members and his opponents in next month's elections, who portray the documentary as part of a wider campaign to defame Israel.

In an interview with journalist Raviv Drucker on Israel's Channel 13, Abraham said the attacks on him and Szor illustrated why many participants wanted to remain anonymous. He defended the film's process for verifying the accounts and events it describes, and questioned why Israeli journalists had done little to investigate civilian deaths and the military's rules of engagement during the war. "Many soldiers told me they had been waiting for a chance to talk about this," he said.

Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for Netanyahu's office, denied the film's allegations and questioned the filmmakers' motivations. "What they wanted was awards from overseas from Israel haters. And they wanted standing applause," he said, referring to the 25-minute ovation the film received in Venice.

Many of the film's central claims have been reported previously, but the official response echoes past reactions to prominent criticism of Israel's conduct, in which critics' motives are questioned and the credibility of allegations is challenged. It also reflects the gulf between how the war is viewed in Israel and internationally. Israelis have largely seen the war as self-defence after the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, which killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostage. Internationally, the conflict has drawn widespread condemnation and accusations of war crimes. Nearly three years of war have destroyed most of Gaza and killed at least 73,789 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.